


Tracks in the Snow

by Newt



Category: RWBY
Genre: Angst, Gen, So much angst, maybe it's hurt/comfort too idk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-09
Updated: 2016-07-09
Packaged: 2018-07-22 13:16:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7440625
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Newt/pseuds/Newt
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the death of their teammate, Jaune, Ren, and Nora are left to pick up the pieces.<br/>A one-shot about a broken little team and their grieving process, which hopefully gives a little more closure on their responses than was seen in the show.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tracks in the Snow

They all remembered the news being delivered.

That pained voice in the cold hospital room, echoing off the walls, crushing them. 

But none could remember what came after.

Some blur of hospital smell and drifting in and out of consciousness and voices and hollowness. There was probably yelling. There was probably crying. There was probably any number of visitors. But the real world had stopped existing. A white haze settled on their dreary hospital room as Jaune slept in a chair and Ren and Nora dozed restlessly in their recovery beds. 

Behind the haze, memories.

A smile. A laugh. A flash of red charging into battle. A pencil tapped against a desk. A rustle of the covers in the night. Her voice filled the room as clearly as any sound.

When Jaune’s mother came to take him home, she was met with three completely broken kids, unconscious in the weight of their own crushing sorrow and guilt.   
There must have been some sort of discussion, because soon they were all on a ship back to Jaune’s house. Mrs. Arc had ruled that Ren and Nora, with no parents to go home to, simply should not be left alone.

***

When Nora first entered the house, she forced herself to smile for the first time in days. It felt unfamiliar to her achy cheeks. She kicked off her shoes, drinking in the signs of a home that was so, so alive. 

The welcome mat was worn away at the middle, and coats overflowed the closet. Some child’s drawings were framed and hung on the wall, smiling at her in a way that hurt in her chest. She turned away, focusing instead on Jaune’s mom.

“Thanks, Mrs. Arc. This is great!”

Jaune’s mom paused to smile at her, then feverishly took off to prepare the space for her new house guests, mumbling about food and cleaning and sheets.

In a matter of minutes, Jaune’s father and two of his sisters had arrived at the door to help, fussing over their injuries and quickly escorting Ren and Nora to some empty rooms for rest.

***

When Ren was first left alone in the house, he felt a strange new wave of sorrow wash over him, unlike the dull ache he had been feeling up until then. He tried to place exactly where it was coming from, and his thoughts kept being directed back to Jaune’s welcoming family. 

He himself, of course, had never known what it felt like to live with such a family. His life was a flurry of dorm rooms and faceless strangers. The closest he’d every come to any sort of family had been… well, it had been their team at Beacon.

He rolled over, his injuries burning underneath fresh bandages.

***

When Jaune’s family had finally left him alone, he cried for the first time. At first it was a lump in his throat, burning and painful, that he tried to choke down. And then, his eyes started burning. Finally, he just let it out, as quietly as possible, sitting against the door to his room so no one would come in and see him. His room was just as he’d left it, full of bright comic books and posters and figurines. 

The colours hurt his eyes.

Blue and Green and Orange and Pink and Red. So much red. 

Curled against the door, he fell asleep again.

***

When Ren woke up the next morning, he immediately left to check on Nora. Finding her asleep in the room next to his, he moved onto Jaune. Also sleeping. Odd. He was rarely ever the first to wake. 

He crept down the stairs into the family room, early sunlight just starting to filter in through the wide front windows. And there, on the couch, sat one of Jaune’s sisters.

She was a talkative thing, who took to him like glue. This always seemed to happen to him. He quickly learned that she had been studying at Signal, before they pulled out all students in the area, and she got to sleep in the basement now that they had guests, and she was very bored without the CCT, and she missed hanging out with her friends, and she was the youngest and one of the four sisters who still lived at home. 

Chatting nervously the entire time, she started to make him breakfast, but he took over, gently. While she talked, he mixed and flipped and stacked pancakes, making enough for his team, and then enough for Jaune’s whole family, and then leftovers for good measure. By the time he was done, everyone had filtered into the kitchen.

They ate mostly in silence.

***

When Nora counted that she’d re-wrapped her wounds for the fifth time, she decided that she’d had quite enough sulking around, thank-you-very-much, and would way rather be out back training than cooped up inside for one more minute. Not even one.

She found an old broom that was weighted pretty well, and slipped outside to swing it around a bit. And there she stayed, for hours, just training and training until her muscles ached almost as much as the rest of her.

Jaune’s parents tried to get her to come rest, but eventually realized that it was probably better to just appease the tiny energetic girl with the strength of a million suns, instead of trying to fight her. They set up some straw bags, politely turning her pent-up energy away from the side of the house.

When Jaune heard her training outside the window, he moved from his own room into one of his sisters’. He’d found a wi-fi-less puzzle app on his scroll, and spent hours just systematically sliding pieces together to form pictures. He didn’t want to read any of his favourite books or play any of his favourite games, in fear of letting his bad mood ruin them forever. Instead, he did puzzles. Endlessly, mindlessly, and thought of her.

***

When Ren started cleaning the basement, Jaune’s parents began to worry. He’d been nothing but the biggest help for them, cooking and cleaning and fussing over everything, all without a word. But the basement was a whole different monster. All their memories from their first child to their eighth was piled up somewhere in there, and it was really quite a mess. 

Sometimes Jaune or Nora would help Ren clean, but mostly Jaune kept to the upstairs and Nora kept to the yard.

Jaune’s mother confronted Jaune about it, one day, after his routine hug-and-how-are-you-feeling checkup.

“Your friend Ren… is he always this quiet?”

Jaune almost smiled at that, but then remembered Pyrrha, and realized he shouldn’t be smiling or happy or anything.

“Yeah, mom. He’s just… like that,” he said, pressing his lips together.

“Oh, well that’s good, I suppose. I was starting to get worried,” she sat down next to him, rubbing his back a little. “And, your friend Nora…”

“She’s like that too, I think. Well, maybe not the constant training thing. She definitely has the energy for it, though. Mostly we just stay out of her way when she does this stuff.”

Jaune’s mom smiled, trying to catch his eye. Here came the part that he hated, every time.

“You know, if you want to talk about her, your father and I are always here to listen.”

“Okay, mom.”

“Lord knows there’s not much else to do, what with your friend doing all of the housework.”

“Okay.”

***

He hadn’t spoken a word aloud about her since the day he lost her. Instead, he hoarded memories like treasures, wrapping them up in his chest, shelving them with regrets, sealing them with a kiss.

***

When Nora was alone in her room at night, she really, really felt the creeping hand of grief. Mostly, she worked through it, punching it in the FACE, but when she was alone with nothing but the darkness and her thoughts, it was really easy for her brain to fill up with images of Pyrrha.

She forced herself to sleep every night, hoping against hope that she would have a dream where they were all together again. And, every night, the nightmares came instead.

***

When Ren woke up, there was always a hazy moment where his mind tricked him into thinking he was back at Beacon, surrounded by his team, about to sleepily gather his things for another day of classes. Once he cleared his head, feeling the weight of his missing teammate rush in again was like a physical punch. 

He checked on the other two every morning, and, every morning, he spent a few minutes alone, wandering the halls, imagining there was someone else to check on. 

***

When Jaune slept, it was dreamless. He drifted in and out of a fog of waking and dreaming, his every thought occupied with trying to memorize everything Pyrrha had ever said to him. Sometimes, he’d grasp onto a new memory, and replay it over and over again, trying to catch the inflection of her tone, the quirk of a grin, the tilt of an eyebrow. The longer he thought about it, the harder it was to grasp, until he eventually had no choice but to move somewhere else, and occupy himself some other way.

The nights were lonely, the nights were dark, and he wanted nothing more than to be back in their room at Beacon, trying to block out Nora’s snoring, hearing the rustle of Ren’s blankets as he rolled over, and, sometimes, when he couldn’t sleep at all, focussing on the even breathing of the still form in the bed right beside his. 

Jaune’s parents had lots of space, now that his sisters were moved out, but they didn’t complain one bit when Ren and Nora decided to roll out some old sleeping bags on the floor of Jaune’s room, uniting them all once again in a crowded little sleeping space.

***

Nora was the first one to get angry, and it was completely unlike anything she had ever felt. She overexerted herself one day, and came inside in a scathing mood, rubbing at a stitch in her side. Usually she was able to convince herself that any anger was just energy, and use it to run around or do some jumping jacks or bother Ren. But, for some reason, it just wouldn’t go away that day.

“Nora, did you hurt yourself?” asked Ren, turning around from the oven where he was baking his fourth pie.

“No, Ren! I’m just holding my side and panting for NO REASON!” she cried, draping herself dramatically over a few kitchen chairs.

“You should be more careful,” said Jaune, looking up from his scroll. He was sitting across from her at the table, feet propped up. He didn’t look at her, but scrunched up his brow, forcing out the words like they were a nuisance. “If you don’t heal properly, you’ll be hurt longer or something.”

Something about his whole tone just completely set her off. Like a switch flicked in her brain. Her vision went blurry as she zeroed in on Jaune.

“Well, ONE of us has to train! I can’t believe I’m the only one who wants to get stronger around here! What about our team? What about our lessons? Are we just going to give it all up?”

Ren blinked at her, ignoring the beeping oven timer. Jaune’s attention was on her now, and his mouth hung open a bit.

“Well, Ren’s still healing. And, I mean, we can’t really contact anyone else since the network’s been down, no point in…”

“Augh! That is the WORST attitude, Jaune! You have attitude PROBLEMS! Maybe if you could just get rid of your stupid ATTITUDE and really LEARN something, you could actually fight! And then MAYBE, you could have stopped Pyrrha from…” 

Nora slammed on the brakes immediately, slapping both palms against her mouth. She didn’t mean that. She definitely didn’t mean that.

***

When Jaune reared up against her, he meant it with every fiber of his being. He rocketed out of his chair, his already cracked scroll falling to the tile floor with a smack. He gripped the edges of the table, willing himself to hold it together.

“Do not…” his breathing was laboured, his eyes burning. “Do NOT….”

“Nora…” said Ren, frowning at her, muscles twitching in his cheek.

“I… I’m so sorry…” she said, eyes filling with tears. She shrank back down, hands trembling. “I’m so…”

And, suddenly, she wasn’t Nora at all. He remembered those exact words, but from someone else entirely. All the fight drained out of him and, arms limp, he turned on his heel and rushed out of the room. He heard an eruption of sobs behind him, but he willed himself not to care. He brought himself into his room, and just managed to shut the door before his own tears started, accompanied by a strangled, animal sound.

***

Now, more than anything, Ren wanted to believe in magic. Although most of him knew it was conjecture, there was a part of him that deeply, achingly wanted to be able to go back in time. To the day of the singles tournament, or the day that the other schools arrived, or even the day that he and Nora had found those chess pieces in the Emerald Forest. 

It seemed like every event up until now had perfectly lined up in order for all of this to happen, and that any slight bump in the timeline would leave her perfectly safe. That’s how it was supposed to be. Pyrrha, happy and safe. Even if it meant pulling her from the match, even if it meant confronting students who had appeared to be innocent.

Even if it meant that they never met at all.

***

When Jaune first saw the picture in his dad’s hand, he almost couldn’t believe it.

His dad sat down on the floor next to Jaune, holding it out to him with a furrowed brow.

“Your sister reminded me that Beacon always takes pictures of the teams during the first week of classes. We got sent this a while back. I didn’t know if you’d want to see it, but it’s actually very nice. You should keep a picture of her.”

Jaune reached out for the picture, taking it between finger and thumb. He’d completely forgotten that they’d ever taken this. There they were, fresh-faced and ready for a new school year. They were lined up in order, him-Nora-Pyrrha-Ren, all smiles and excitement and pride. He scanned Nora and Ren’s faces before chancing a glance at Pyrrha.

It was a really nice picture of her, a little younger than he’d seen her in a while, smiling her uniquely Pyrrha smile. 

“Listen, Jaune… in the package they mailed out, they included contact information for just about every student in your year. We have… you know, her address and stuff. If you ever wanted to send something to her family, or something like that, that might be a nice gesture. Your mother and I can go looking for something tomorrow.” 

His dad shot him a worried look.

“Okay, I’ll think about it,” said Jaune.

He didn’t want to think about Pyrrha’s family at all. Stupidly, selfishly, he’d only been wallowing in his own memories of her. Just that idea that there were seventeen years of memories he didn’t even know anything about, aside from a few jokes or stories here and there, was enough to crush him. Seventeen years was a lot of memories. Seventeen years wasn’t nearly enough.

No, thinking about her family, contacting them, would make it real. And, although he knew it was real, there was still a part of him that couldn’t let go of a nagging feeling that he was missing something, some clue that would lead him back to her.

“Thanks dad.”

***

They say that if you dream that the dead look you in the eye, that’s really them. Their spirit, come back to tell you something.

Jaune had had quite a few dreams about her, when he dreamt, but he could never seem to catch her eye.

Tonight was different.

***

It started out like any other nightmare, with him chasing her through the grimm-infested school, twisting and turning, always just a few steps behind. In his dreams, his legs just wouldn’t move properly. They were weighed down, slow, and his feet couldn’t grip the ground.

Just as the usual fire engulfed them both, something stopped it. He turned around to see her standing there, behind him instead of ahead. The scene shifted, and they were in a forest. The forest. The one where they’d first locked eyes, and become partners forever.

“Need a hand?” she said, impossibly green eyes locked on his as she smiled up at him.

Up…. 

Up at him. Great. He was stuck to a tree again.

“I guess so,” he said, and then he was falling. She was there, in front of him, holding his hands, leaning in, his heart was unbearably light, his stomach fluttering, and then…

“What are you doing, Jaune?”

She seemed irritated now, drawing back.

“Wha? Bluh, well, I thought I was…”

“No, not this. I mean, out there.”

She let go of his hands, still staring fully into his eyes, with a slight frown.

“You’re supposed to be their leader.”

His heart sank, his shame reflected in the atmosphere as the forest grew dark and Pyrrha slowly blended into it, dissolving away.

“I’m no good at being a leader,” he said, desperately trying to keep her in his sights, reaching out.

“Don’t say that!” 

The scenery changed again, sharpening, and they were on the roof, at nighttime. He held a sword in one clammy hand, stuck out in front of him in defense.

Pyrrha looked at him expectantly, waiting for a response.

“Well, it’s the truth! I can’t help them. I can’t… even help myself,” he let the sword fall to his side. “You should have… you should have been the leader.”

She raised up her weapon, now, but when she brought it down, they were in the ruins of the school, standing close together again while the world crashed around them.

“Don’t say that,” she said, quieter now. “They need you. More than ever, now.”

He reached towards her, mouth starting to form more words, but then the dream dissolved for good.

He woke up with tears in his eyes.

***

When Ren woke up the next morning, he noticed Jaune’s bed was empty. This was strange. 

His confusion quickly turned to fear as he realized that he couldn’t find him anywhere in the house. Panic started to settle in. He couldn’t fight the feeling that he’d lost another one.

But then, a sound from outside.

He opened the back door, and, shielding his eyes against the early morning light, saw Jaune, swinging Nora’s broom and attacking and dodging imaginary foes.  
Stiffly, he felt his lips curl into a weary smile.

***

When Nora trained, she trained hard. And she wasn’t about to let these two slouches bring her down. They spent every hour of the day together now, building up their strength and practicing their techniques, and even laughing sometimes when things went horribly wrong.

One night, when they came back in through the living room, there were nine scraggly blond people sitting around instead of the usual six.

“Oh! Here they are!” cried Jaune’s mom, jumping up from where she was wedged at the end of the couch. “These are Jaune’s friends, Ren and Nora.”

There was a general greeting from the room. Nora felt like she was on display. 

“Hi!” she said, waving to everyone. She took a seat next to Jaune’s youngest sister, punching her arm lightly. She pulled Ren down next to her. The sooner they joined the ranks of these people, the sooner they could get the awkward half-sad-half-worried stares off of them. 

Jaune was left standing awkwardly in the doorway, eyes darting between his older sisters and his teammates.

“Jaune, aren’t you going to introduce your friends to your sisters?” asked his mom, gesturing to the four new faces. 

“Yeah Jaune! Don’t be rude!” said Nora, tugging on his pant leg until he sat on the floor next to her and Ren. 

He actually cracked a smile at that, and the hours of conversation began.

Jaune’s family was hilarious. Loud and friendly and caring, everything Nora had wished for when she was a kid. The conversation was a nice distraction, and, for the first time since that day in the hospital room, she let herself smile. No guilt, no force, just a natural smile here and a bit of a laugh there. Someone put out dinner. The sun went down. Eventually, everyone dispersed to their separate rooms, and the emptiness of night loomed over them again. 

**********

“Um… so… I’ve been thinking.” 

Jaune slid onto the floor between Ren and Nora, unfolding the papers he’d taken from his dad a few days ago.

Nora took off her headphones, hanging them around her neck. Ren looked up from one of Jaune’s comics, which he’d been reading with a look of slight confusion. They both leaned in, turning their attention to the paper in his lap. 

“So this is a list of the information on the people in our year at Beacon. They mail it out to parents who want to know, I guess. It’s kind of weird, actually. Anyway.”

He self-consciously curled the top of the paper, deflecting all of their attention away from “Nikos, Pyrrha” and down to “Rose, Ruby”. 

“Ruby, she was there, right? And I mean, she’s not far away. Ships go out to Patch all the time. And it’s still Vale so there wouldn’t be too many Grimm to worry about…”

He paused to judge their reactions. Ren’s face was unreadable, as always, but Nora’s mouth was trembling as she read the information.

“Jaune, I don’t think you should… what are you expecting her to say?”

Shame burned in his stomach. He folded the paper in half three times.

“You’re right. Sorry, this was stupid.” He started to stand up again, but Nora grabbed his sleeve, pulling him back down with extreme Nora force.

“No! It’s not stupid. A trip would be great! If nothing else we’ll get to fight some real monsters, see a little more of Vale... and it’ll be nice to see Ruby and Yang again!”

“Oh, okay,” said Jaune, rubbing his elbow where it had collided with the bedframe. “If you really think so.”

“Nora and I have never been stationary for this long. It feels like a trip is in order,” said Ren, nodding slowly. 

“Okay, great!” 

Jaune felt a lightness in his chest that he quickly pushed back down. No. No happiness when Pyrrha was gone. 

“It’s getting fairly cold out. I’d say the first snowfall isn’t far away,” said Ren, already starting to plan. “We’ll have to pack appropriately.”

“I was thinking we could leave in a few weeks. It would give us time to gather everything.”

“Mittens! Dust! Snacks!”

**********

When their few weeks were up, in the early morning, the three of them gathered their things, and took their first steps into their journey.

The snow crunched under three pairs of feet as they walked together in silence. After Jaune’s house vanished over the horizon, Nora stopped, turning to face where they’d come from.

“I feel so bad, leaving without telling anyone like that,” she whispered, breath fogging up in the crisp air. 

“We left a note,” said Jaune. Guilt squirmed in his stomach. “My dad will understand. He used to go on missions and stuff all the time.”

They all stood there for a long time, silence hanging heavy in the air. There were so many silences between them these days. Never joking, hardly laughing, and never mentioning anything about their time at Beacon. Especially nothing about their team of three.

Jaune wanted to say something so badly. To break the tension. To be a leader. He just wanted to say Pyrrha’s name. It was all he ever thought, but he hadn’t heard it in so long. 

His entire body was cloaked in a relentless, dull ache.

Nora turned back around, and they set off again. 

**********

When they concluded their day of travel, after hours by bus, ship, and aching feet, the three checked into a hotel in Patch. They slept deeply and dreamlessly, Ruby’s address laid out on the night table. 

**********

“We can’t just knock on the door! What if their dad answers?” 

“So what if their dad answers?”

“We’ll look like scary stalker runaway VAGABONDS!”

“Nora, I doubt he’ll assume ‘vagabond’ upon the first meeting.”

“Someone has to knock.”

“Okay, Ren, you knock.”

“Fine…”

Ren knocked four times, the noise splitting the peaceful morning. Their house was absolutely lovely, large and bright and surrounded by nature. Nora had been disappointed to find no grimm on the way there, but Ren was mostly just glad they’d all made it in one piece.

The door opened, revealing a blond, weary-looking man. He carried himself confidently, a fighter’s stance. Ren had heard that Yang and Ruby’s father was an accomplished huntsman in his own right, and it showed.

“Hello! We’re friends of Ruby and Yang and we just wanted to come and visit because like we haven’t seen each other in a while and we thought we’d say hello, we were in the neighbourhood, just randomly, you know, so here we are!” 

Nora was talking too much again. Ren held back the urge to sigh.

The man blinked a few times, slowly registering Nora’s word barrage.

“Oh, you’re friends from Beacon? That’s… that’s great! I’ll let them know you’re here. Actually, maybe you should come up to visit, they’re both sleeping still, I think. Ruby! Yang!”

He hurried into the house, picking up a tray of food he’d apparently set aside to answer the door. 

“Oh, I’m Taiyang, by the way. And your names are?”

“Jaune, Nora, and Ren,” said Jaune, shaking Taiyang’s hand. Taiyang nodded, still looking somewhat distracted. 

“Just let me warn them,” he said, starting up a well-lit staircase.

Ren followed the others in, removing his shoes and following behind Taiyang, up the stairs.

The man knocked on the door to the nearest room, slowly opening it. Ren spotted Nora nervously shuffling her feet on the hardwood floor.

“Ruby? Some friends are here to see you. Are you awake?” 

There was a shuffling of blankets and a mumbled response. Taiyang stepped into the room. There was a short silence. 

Anxiety built in Ren’s chest, but he breathed through it.

Taiyang poked his head out from around the door.

“Okay, you can go in now.”

***************

When Ruby’s dad had told her she had visitors, she hadn’t really known what to expect. Uncle Qrow again? Maybe a neighbour or something? 

To say the least, these three caught her completely off guard. She gasped a little, sitting up straighter.

“Jaune! Ren! Nora! When did you… how did you get here?”

Nora perked up, throwing a bound booklet onto Ruby’s covers.

“Stalker list!”

Ruby laughed at that, crawling out from under the covers to grab the booklet she recognized from orientation day.

“This thing is so weird, right?”

“It sure is!”

There was a heavy silence. To address the obvious, or not?

“Are you going to eat that?” asked Nora, gesturing to the food Ruby’s dad had brought up. “I am starrrving.”

“Oh, no, go ahead!” said Ruby.

Nora grinned widely. She sat down at the end of Ruby’s bed, helping herself.

With that, the awkward silence was broken. The four talked for the better part of an hour, reminiscing and chuckling and making dumb jokes. She tried so hard to keep them all happy and smiling. Every silence felt like she was losing, somehow. All the while, Jaune wouldn’t meet her eyes.

The more she talked, the more her ideas for them grew. She’d been working on something. Something big.

She was going to let them in on her plan.

***************

When Ruby was done talking, Jaune was filled with a new sense of purpose. He’d been a coward up until then, too afraid to mention the thing that he’d come here for in the first place. 

But now, hope.

After a while, they had a brilliant new plan. And, it seemed, they were really going to do this.

Ruby glanced around the room, biting her lower lip.

“Ren and Nora, I know you’re probably still healing. You guys really don’t have to come if…” 

“Of course we’re coming!” Nora blurted, interrupting her.

Ruby grinned weakly as Ren nodded in agreement.

“Well, if you’re sure… I think I’m going to leave in… oh, Dad!”

There was a creaking outside as Taiyang walked by. Ruby gestured for them all to lean in, and, heads together, continued.

“We should go tomorrow, I think.”

They all nodded, new purpose set into their faces.

Then, all of them close together, Jaune’s stomach churning, he finally gathered the courage to say what had been on his mind since day one. He leaned back a little, not meeting anyone’s eyes.

“Ruby… on that day, what did you see up there? Is it… is there any chance that…”

He couldn’t quite finish the sentence. Nora’s feet fidgeted. Ren inhaled deeply. There was a long silence, but he dared not look up. When Ruby finally spoke, he could hear the sadness in her voice.

“I’m… I’m so sorry, Jaune. But, I know what I saw. There was Cinder, and… and my Uncle Qrow said…”

His spirits plummeted. He didn’t want to hear any more.

“That’s okay, Ruby. Thanks. We’ll see you tomorrow, alright?”

He looked up at her, giving his best attempt at a reassuring smile. She nodded.

“We should visit Yang now!” said Nora, jumping off of Ruby’s bed.

“I… don’t think Yang’s accepting visitors,” said Ruby, turning away.

**********

When they were all settling into bed that night, there was a definite nervous air in the room. The three of them sat in a circle on the hotel floor, reading and counting supplies and listening to music.

Silence pressed in on them, and Jaune glanced around at the faces of his two teammates. They both seemed troubled, even behind their usual masks of normality. 

He guessed the news had been weighing on them all. He’d known all along, somehow, but still…

Nora made the first move. She punched a pillow, then laid against it, head tilted towards the ceiling. When she blinked, there were tears. And then, she spoke.

“Do you guys remember that time we locked ourselves out of our room?”

Ren laughed, and Jaune broke into a wide, manic grin.

“What, you mean that time when we got back late? And none of us remembered our scrolls?”

Nora laughed, unnaturally loudly.

“Yeah! And I convinced Pyrrha to use her semblance to try to break the lock, remember? Glynda was so mad. She couldn’t even put it back together right. We had to get a whole new lock.”

“Mine still never worked properly with my scroll,” lamented Ren.

“Well good thing I was always there to let you in,” said Nora, sitting up and poking him playfully.

“Except that one time…”

“What, the time I was literally one door away? With team RWBY? It’s not my fault you don’t check in the most obvious places!”

“Oh yeah, I remember that! Pyrrha and I were trying out that restaurant… the new one. She didn’t even get to try her food before she ran off to help you.”

“Which was a good thing! You had food poisoning for a week!”

Jaune laughed.

“Ugh… I can still feel it. Ren took care of me, though. And Pyrrha, she kept checking in on me in between classes. She woke me up so many times…”

And just like that, the dam was broken. The taboo that had been meticulously placed on her name since day one was lifted, and they were sharing every memory they could possibly think of.

“Remember the dance?”

“Jaune, you ROCKED that dress.”

“What can I say, I made a promise.”

“Remember the food fight?”

“Oh yeah! When Pyrrha threw all those cans, Agh! I could TASTE the victory! And then….”

“Remember that time in class when she kicked so much butt, Cardin Winchester walked with a limp for like a month?!”

“Nora, that’s hyperbole. It was a week, at most. But then…”

“Oh, and THEN…”

“Remember when…”

They talked until their throats were sore, and then talked more. They talked until they were all laughing and crying at the same time, wiping away tears in between rushing to tell another story that was coming to them.

And she was there. Filling the room, her laugh, her smile, her voice and her movements. She was there, she was there, she was there. 

Just for that night, they were JNPR again.

************ 

“I want to find Cinder,” Nora said, her breath fogging up in the frigid morning air. “I want to find her, and I want to kill her.”

“Nora…” Ren looked at her nervously, shifting a little bit.

“We all do,” said Jaune. “But we don’t even know where to start.”

“We’ll come up with a way, I know we will,” said Nora, punching at the air. “We’re super strong now. We can handle this. We’re not… we won’t lose anyone else. Not even me. I promise.”

Silently, Jaune swore it. Right then and there.

No.

They absolutely would not, EVER lose anyone else. 

He’d picked up the pieces of his broken team once, and he was still trying to figure out how to fit them back together.

Maybe there was no way to fit them back together.

Pyrrha’s death still weighed on them all, aging their faces and hiding behind every gesture, every conversation. Jaune still never stopped thinking about her. But now they were doing something, moving towards a final goal, and it made a world of difference.

Their steps crunched in the fresh snow as they carved a new path towards Ruby’s house, ready with the signal at her window and the plan fresh in their minds.

Slowly, surely, they added to their three sets of tracks in the snow, creating a thousand, a million scattered footprints. Like memories, left behind.

**Author's Note:**

> Too many angst.docx  
> So, uh, this was a very personal piece for me ;w;. Basically the story is that when my brother and I were younger we became really really good friends with another pair of siblings, and the four of us hung out together all the time and became super close. Then, one day, our most vibrant member was killed really suddenly and violently (PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE DO NOT DRINK AND DRIVE), and her death was super hard on all of us, of course. When I first started watching RWBY I was really in love with team JNPR, and then Pyrrha’s death, from a short-time-acquainted-super-close-group-of-four hit me extra hard, and in lots of ways. This is me trying to get a handle on what it’s like to experience and write about grief, and I first drafted it and posted it all at once at 2 AM the day after the episode aired, which was DUMB, and I got some negative comments that were totally valid, but hurt to see on something so personal. Well, now it’s all revised and I think I’m ready to put it out there (it does feel good to get stuff like this out in the world). So, yeah, hopefully it’s better now! Thanks for reading my depressing nonsense, hopefully I’ll write something happier at some point.  
> (The title is a reference to a song, by the way. Look it up, think of team JNPR, and WEEP).


End file.
